


Thief of Memories

by Mhalachai



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-07
Updated: 2006-11-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14561418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: Ellen never expected Sam Winchester to walk back into her bar, but she can't say as she was at all surprised.





	Thief of Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2006, in and around episode 2x06, "No Exit"

* * *

He showed up one week later, appearing alone like smoke while she mopped the Roadhouse floor.

Looking back, she didn't know why she wasn't surprised. She thought his brother would be the first to crack, the first to come storming through that door, demanding the answers she's not prepared to give.

She didn't expect Sam to be the one on her doorstep. She kept her eyes on the floor. There was nothing more she had to say to John Winchester's son.

"Why did you call him?"

Carelessly, she dropped the mop against the bar, and started pulling chairs off tables. She thought he meant, why had she called Dean when her daughter went missing, and in this he was nothing like this father. John never would have bothered to ask. "I wanted my daughter back, damnit."

The chair hit the ground a little loud, but she didn't care. It wasn't loud enough to drive off a Winchester.

"I don't mean Dean." She heard a soft sound behind her, another chair being set down gently. Sam was helping set her house in order, and she hated him for it.

"Then what the hell do you mean?" The words came out harsher than she meant, but she didn't know why she would want to be gentle with this boy. He was tall and young and full of potential, too much like Jo and not enough like John for her comfort. The boy had no damned right to be like this.

Sam set the chair down and slid it under the table. He reached for the next chair, his left hand picking up the chair's weight while he used his broken right arm to guide it down. Looking at that reminder of his fragility, at a man stronger and faster than she had ever been, all she could think about was the half-told story she'd wormed out of Ash, of what Jo had told him about her first "job".

Her daughter's first hunt.

She hadn't woken up with nightmares for years, until her daughter had gone off to follow in her dead father's footsteps.

"Why did you call my dad?" Sam asked, reaching for another chair. "Back four months before he died. Why then?"

This time, his grip on the chair slipped, and the chair fell to the floor with a clatter. Ellen didn't move to help him.

"Don't you go breaking up my property," was all she could choke out past the frantic pounding of her heart.

Mechanically, she moved back behind the bar, started checking her stock before the night rolled in. She'd sent Jo into town to get more soda, and Ash was with her. That meant Ellen was all alone in the bar with this boy; this questioning, burning son of John.

"Why did you call him?" Sam pressed, righting the chair. He watched her closely, with that same fiery intensity as his father. "Why did you offer to help, if he..."

The unspoken words hung in the air between them, thick as rock salt. _If he let your husband die_.

She knew what Jo had told Dean, what Sam must have heard. She remembered what John had said to her, that last time they spoke, how Jo had been crying for her daddy in the back room while Ellen held that knife at John's throat, told him to get out and never come back.

John never came back, and Ellen never had the chance to ask him why. She'd called him a dozen times over the years, leaving him messages on broken down machines, whispers of danger and evil that she couldn't trust to anyone else.

John never called her back, and Ellen wasn't sure if she was sorry about that. If that wasn't what she deserved.

Still. John's son, so different from his father and yet so much the same, was staring at her with those burning eyes.

She didn't owe him a damned thing, least of all this. He'd been there with her daughter, had let her precious baby girl play bait for a murderous spirit, no less complicit in the danger than his stupid older brother.

She couldn't stop the words spilling out of her mouth.

"I told you, we got to stick together in this fight. Against that demon." Not even noon, and she was pouring herself a drink. Most nights, she didn't touch the stuff until after the bar was closed. The Winchester men always drove her to drink. "Didn't matter what happened back then."

The whisky burned her throat, but she never let herself drink the good stuff. Billy and John both had liked expensive whisky, used to divide a bottle between them on those hot summer nights. They'd all shared everything, in those days.

She wasn't going to think about that now.

Shaking off the cobwebs of twenty years, Ellen could see that Sam didn't understand. He was so young, so idealistic. It was going to get him killed.

"What the hell do you want me to say?" she demanded. She wanted Sam to look shocked, or angry, anything but this faint resignation. "Look, this isn't about the past, it's about what the Demon can do to us all, to everyone, if we don't work together to defeat it."

The words sounded so stupid, like cheesy bad TV dialogue, and she hated saying them, especially to this boy who, if he could be believed, dreamt of a future of death and pain.

He looked down at his broken hand, resting on the scarred wood of the bar. Then he looked at her, angry now, smouldering under the surface. It wasn't John's anger, it was all his own, and Ellen didn't know how to deal with that. Something about Sam put her on edge, had always made her turn to deal with Dean.

Dean, she understood. Hunters like him were a dime a dozen, born to the fight, killers without a thought. Most burned up in the fight, riding the edge until they toppled over, running to their deaths with empty guns and throats bared. Like John, like Dean, like Billy.

Sam was different. Maybe it was that connection to the Demon she knew he had. Maybe it was those patient, burning eyes. Whatever it was, twisted in Ellen's gut.

Suddenly, the glass was flying out of her hand, hitting the opposite wall, and she didn't remember moving. This wasn't her. She didn't do stuff like this.

Sam was on his feet, moving faster than any man should.

"It doesn't matter what John did or didn't do," Ellen said faintly. The wood of the bar was hard against her trembling palms. "Doesn't matter what happened then, to any of us. We gotta do what's right."

Sam's hand didn't move from his hip. "If that's what you think, why did you tell Jo what you did about my dad?"

Ellen wished she had never picked up that phone to call John Winchester, those many months before. "You boys used my daughter as god-damned _bait_ \--"

"We didn't _make_ Jo do anything!" Sam shouted. He had never raised his voice to her before, and she couldn't move in the face of his sudden fury. "She walked into this with her eyes open, Ellen, and she did a damned good job!" He pushed back from the bar, towering over her in ways John never could. "She saved lives with what she did! That girl, she's alive because of what Jo did!"

The words were out of Ellen's mouth before she could stop herself. "What the hell would you know about keeping girls alive?"

She hadn't meant to bring his girl into this. She knew what it was to lose someone she loved. She hadn't meant to bring up Jessica's death, to fling it in his face because she was still scared to wake up to find Jo dead.

There was no expression at all on his face. Before she could find something to say, to try and figure out a way to apologize, Sam turned away.

"Dean's not our father," he said, his back to Ellen. "Saving lives means more to him than killing evil things. Dean--" His voice cracked. "Dean's a good man."

He was gone before Ellen could breathe again.

* * *

He called three weeks later.

"How's Jo?" was the first thing he asked.

Ellen glanced across the bar to where her blonde daughter was hustling a hunter at pool. "Still kicking."

"Good." She heard him clear his throat, over the background noise of the street. "Can I ask you a question?"

So they weren't going to mention their last conversation. Good. "What?"

"When I called you that time to ask you about Gordon Walker?"

Ellen turned her back to the bar, and to old Bob Tanner signalling for another beer. "What about it?"

Sam was silent for a minute. "You said he was a good hunter. Then you told me to get us away from him."

She wished she'd just let the phone ring. "So?"

"What would you tell someone if they called asking about us?"

"What do you want me to tell you, Sam?" Ellen demanded.

"A little truth might be nice."

She had half a mind to slam the phone down on him "Have I ever lied to you?" she demanded, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder as she went to get Bob a drink.

"Have you?"

"Why did you call? To ask after Jo?" Ellen slammed the beer down in front of Bob and took his money.

"I don't understand you."

The cash register wobbled slightly when Ellen pulled open the till to grab some change. "Why the hell do you need to?"

Sam coughed on the other end of the line. "If we were to be swinging back through town in a few days, should we bother coming by?"

For the first time in a handful of years, Ellen didn't know what to say.

She was still trying to think of a response when Sam hung up.

* * *

Two months later, Ellen walked out of the back room to find Sam pulling chairs off the tables.

"I thought Jo was doing that," she said in greeting.

Sam looked up at her through a fringe of bangs, and for a moment she forgot that she was old enough to be his mother, old enough to have a daughter just two years younger than this man. "She went outside to talk to Dean."

"Perfect."

Ellen pulled a cold can of soda out of the fridge and pushed it across the bar at Sam. He cracked a sudden grin, setting down the last chair, then he crossed the floor, self-assured steps as his long legs ate up the distance. "Thanks," was all he said.

It took all she had not to move to the window, to try to see what Jo and Dean were up to. She knew that she had crushed that flare in Jo's eyes when it came to Dean Winchester. Ellen had hated to do it, but she had her reasons. Jo might never forgive her, but she'd also never know why her mother had done it.

That was for the best.

Finally, Ellen could stand Sam's silent gaze no longer. "Think they're okay out there?" she asked.

Sam quirked up the corner of his mouth. "Yeah." He set his drink down as the amusement faded from his face. "They're not--" He cut himself off and tried again. "Dean's not Dad, and Jo's not her dad, either. It's not going to end that way again."

Ellen had expected a comment like that, and she didn't react. "You don't know how it's going to end up."

Sam shrugged. "Neither do you."

She had to give him that.

He finished the last of his soda, then reached into his pocket to pull out a sheaf of papers. "Did you mean what you said?" he asked.

"About what?"

"About us working together, to stop the demon?"

She just looked at him.

He broke first. "Right." He tossed the papers on the bar between them. "We picked this up, it might be nothing, but..." He stared at her with those burning eyes. "But we have to start somewhere."

He could have given those papers to Ash, or even to Jo. But Sam Winchester gave them to her.

Sam wasn't his father. Dean wasn't his father. Most importantly, Jo wasn't her father. Those men were dead and gone, to ash and smoke in the sky, and the living had to move on and pick up the pieces, just like always.

She took the papers up with steady hands. There wasn't a word she understood, not under Sam's scrutiny, but it didn't matter.

Sam slumped against the bar, relief in every angle of his long body. "We think it's sunk into hiding," he began, his voice low and steady against the hum of the fridge.

Outside, the sun was shining, Jo and Dean were talking, and the forces of evil were gathering on the horizon. All they had was a handful of hunters, an inkling of an idea as to what the Demon wanted, and a burning determination stop the evil that threatened their families, their lives and their hopes.

It wasn't much, but it was all that they had.

With Sam Winchester watching her with quiet eyes, Ellen had to believe that it would be enough.


End file.
